An ultrasonic imaging apparatus is an apparatus for acquiring an image of an object, for example, tomographic images of various kinds of tissues, structures, or the like in a human body, or images of a bloodstream or the like by using ultrasonic waves. Such an ultrasonic imaging apparatus is relatively small and inexpensive, can display images in real time, has no risk of exposure to X-rays and the like, and thus is widely used in medical fields, for example, cardiology, internal medicine, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, and the like.
The ultrasonic imaging apparatus emits an ultrasonic signal toward a target part inside an object, collects an ultrasonic echo signal reflected from the target part, and then generates an ultrasonic image from the collected ultrasonic echo signal. To this end, the ultrasonic imaging apparatus performs beamforming to estimate amplitude of a reflected wave in a specific space from a plurality of pieces of channel data resulting from an ultrasonic echo signal collected through an ultrasonic transducer. The beamforming collects a time difference between ultrasonic signals received through the ultrasonic transducer and emphasizes a signal of a specific position or relatively attenuates a signal of another position by applying a predetermined weight, that is, a beamforming coefficient, to each of the received ultrasonic signals so that the ultrasonic signals are focused. Due to the beamforming, the ultrasonic imaging apparatus can generate an ultrasonic image suitable for identifying an internal structure of the object and provide the ultrasonic image to a user.